What is Peter Hain for?

What is Peter Hain for exactly?

It was reported in the media last weekend that Peter Hain had kept his two jobs in the cabinet because Tony Blair believed he "had done a good job in Northern Ireland". Exactly. No mention of how well or otherwise he was doing in Wales.

Why is it that we in Wales suffer such a man solely because of the quality of the job he is doing in another country? And why is it that Peter Hain is so keen to reconvene a NI Assembly which will have a huge range of devolved powers when he will not even offer them to us "for a generation at least"?

Closer inspection also reveals that his success in NI has been very limited. His failure to reconvene the Assembly even while the infrastructure of government has continued in place (including paying the members their salaries for doing nothing) has cost us, the taxpayers, millions of pounds.

Sooner or later Hain will have his promotion and will leave us behind. He ought now to pay more attention to the views of people such as Bishop Barry Morgan and Cymru Yfory/Wales Tomorrow who are here for the long run, who have a sympathy for the past which is not confined to petty politics and who have a real vision for the future of Wales, a country which is well able to determine its own affairs.